The clothing swap part of Fatty Affair seemed to be the most popular portion for sure. And while I only snagged a couple of tops towards the end of the main part of the swap, I’ve already worn one and Love it! What was truly fun for me was getting to see what people picked up, tried on and strutted around in! Many were quite pleased to just change on the spot and wear their new garb the rest of the day. That is so cool!

We also had a catwalk/fatshion show where people were asked to get their strut on if they were feeling good in what they were wearing, even if it wasn’t from the swap (the song of choice of course being “Super Model” by RuPaul). At first we had sign up sheets, but only one person signed up. So I said fuck it and started just recruiting people! Ha-ha! This did seem to work as soon there was a line on either side of the stage area. I didn’t realize that Jery would be the first or that he would even be participating, other than being the emcee, but gurl! He knew how to kick it off:

I went next and decided to twirl before bustin’ out my swagger down the catwalk:

Nicole of AWellRoundedVenture.com was, as always, dressed to impress!

Raven was such a good sport since she originally had no intention of participating:

Tigress & Amanda teamed up for an adorable twirl and strut combo!

But I have to say it, nobody embodied the spirit of the day or the swap quite like my friend Lauren!

This is her catwalk outfit (she had just snagged it in the swap):

This is what she showed up to Fatty Affair wearing (posing with her own artwork):

And this is what she ended up wearing the rest of the night after the fatshion show

(posing here with Milo and her companion looking ever so fabulous!):

It was a total blast! We all clapped along to the song and for each model. It felt so good and so empowering!
To live your entire life being told you could never do something because you’re fat? Yeah, fuck all of that!
We can do anything we damn well please! Together, as a community, we can move mountains and make dreams come true! I know this because it is my own experience. To see people really come into their own and become the person they always wanted to be. To shed the bullshit and the guilt and let go of toxic relationships and just live each day for you. To try things and step outside your comfort zone and experience the dazzling pleasures life has to offer if only we did that more! This is what Fatty Affair and the Fat community mean to me and have done for me.

I urge you, if you have even a tiny desire to attend something like this, do it yourself! Plan it! Team up! Coordinate! It’s so fucking worth it and you won’t regret it! Hit me up for tips. I mean, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, but I did it! Ha-ha! You don’t have to live somewhere specific or know “all the right people” because that is not at all what this is about. This was only ever about community for me. It was only ever about exchanging the love! And belly bumps! Ha!

“Fatty Affair: FATshion!”

Some of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life were ones I made on a whim/impulse and just jumped right into.

To this day, I have no clue what caused me – the shy mousy kid everyone beat up on – to decide to take drama as my elective my first year of junior high. But getting up onstage and finding something special I was good at helped me raise my self-esteem and find a home.

I sent off for that beginner’s bobbin lace making kit was something I didn’t think very hard about, but doing that found me my best creative outlet in decades. It brought me to another great passion, and lead to my having a completely unique wedding gown.

Speaking of which, I accepted that first date with Mr. Twistie more as a way of getting back into the dating pool in the shallow end after a bad break up than looking for love. We’ll celebrate our nineteenth wedding anniversary in June. We’re still utterly besotted with one another.

When I was offered a chance to fill in for a week as the bridal blogger in the Manolosphere, I said yes because I thought it might be kind of fun to spout off about weddings for a week. Five years later, I’m the sole editor of the bridal blog, I’m the sole editor and creator of the crafts blog, and I’m the weekend editor of Big Girl. I thought I was going to write for a few days and didn’t realize at first that it was a paying gig. Now I’m a professional writer with nearly five years of experience under my belt. I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was six. Now I am one.

Jumping off a cliff is scary, and it doesn’t always work out. All the same, there are a lot of leaps of faith have brought me amazing rewards, and only a few have resulted in any significant regret.

You can be damn certain if I’d been well enough to go, I would have signed up to strut my stuff down that catwalk.